In a digital communication system that uses a coherent receiver, the receiver typically estimates the channel impulse response (CIR) and channel delay in order to perform coherent demodulation of a received signal. Where such coherent systems use wireless communication links, the CIR is not constant and changes with the environment as the transmitter or the receiver change location. For the same reason, the signal delay is not constant and changes slowly. Thus, in wireless coherent systems, the receiver typically must dynamically update its estimates of the CIR and channel delay.